They’ve become one of modern life’s inevitabilities along with death and taxes: the little pop-up boxes that appear when you look at a website, asking you to consent or “agree”. If you (like most of us) just automatically click “yes”, you might want to think again. By agreeing you are consenting to letting the people behind that website collect all sorts of data about you, including some that could seriously invade your privacy. You can, of course, read the fine print – but that can take an age. This could no doubt be made easier, but don’t hold your breath. And maybe think twice before clicking away your rights.

The works of J.R.R. Tolkien have been under scrutiny recently after allegations that the author’s portrayal of the monstrous Orcs in his Lord of the Rings trilogy in some ways betrayed a belief that some races are better than others. While Tolkien himself was famously horrified by Hitler and the Nazis, could some kind of unconscious dehumanising have crept into his fiction? You decide.

Still on books and authors, we unearthed the tale of a 14th-century theologian whose behaviour around women wouldn’t seem too different to the complaints raised by today’s #MeToo movement. But Richard Rolle was man enough to admit he’d been inappropriate. A #MeToo moment from medieval times perhaps.

It was another landmark week for The Conversation as our colleagues in Canada launched the French version of their hugely successful site. They have already published some superb content, including this piece about the shameful sterilisation of indigenous women and this article about Canada’s Christian right and what it has learned from its American counterparts.

This week we also learned about near-death experiences, the power of Twitter to move markets and why so many women are rejecting the breast cancer drug tamoxifen.

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